Census Doesn't Use The `H' Word

November 23, 2001|By Jeff Kunerth, Sentinel Staff Writer

There are no homeless people in Orlando, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Instead, they are "people without conventional housing."

The Census Bureau counts people living in temporary and emergency shelters, under bridges and in woods and parks. After being accused of undercounting the homeless in the 1990 census, however, the bureau decided against trying to determine the size of the nation's homeless population in the 2000 census.

Instead, it counted all those staying in shelters such as the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida and defined them as "people without conventional housing."

It also counted people in "targeted non-sheltered outdoor locations" -- woods, fields, overpasses and bridges -- and lumped them in with residents of domestic-abuse shelters, military hospitals, and dorms for nurses and interns in a category called "other non-institutional group quarters."

For the record, the 2000 census found 931 people living in unconventional housing in the Metropolitan Orlando area of Orange, Seminole, Osceola and Lake counties. Statewide, 7,110 Florida residents were unconventionally housed. And nationwide, those without conventional housing numbered 178,638.

"It sounds absurd to me," said Bob Brown, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida.

And no matter what the Census Bureau thinks, Brown said, he's not changing the name to the Coalition for People Without Conventional Housing of Central Florida.